1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of computer systems.
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2. Background Art
Computer systems often include additional devices used to provide additional functionality. These devices, often called “peripheral” devices, can include keyboards, printers, scanners, network interface and graphics cards, modems, monitors, cameras, and sound input devices. Generally, a device driver is used to control the peripheral device. In some network environments, the traditional device driver may not operate correctly. This problem can be understood by a review of peripheral devices.
Peripheral devices are often connected to a computer system through an expansion bus. An expansion bus allows the processor of a computer system (via software running on the processor), main memory, and other hardware associated with a computer system to control peripheral hardware devices external to the computer system. An expansion bus consists of conductors for data and control signals, along with hardware support logic chips and possibly firmware. There are a variety of expansion buses such as ISA (Industry Standard Architecture), PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect), S-Bus, VME bus, etc. Each expansion bus defines a certain protocol by which devices that are on the bus are accessed.
A device driver is software used to control a peripheral device that is coupled with the computer system on the bus. A device driver is a program that controls a particular type of device that is attached to your computer. There are device drivers for printers, displays, CD-ROM readers, diskette drives, and so on. Many device drivers are built into an operating system. New device drivers are needed for devices for which the operating system does not already have drivers. A device driver converts the more general input/output instructions of the operating system to messages that the device type can understand. In many computer systems device drivers exist as a dynamic link library (DLL) file.
FIG. 1 illustrates symbolically the interrelation of devices, device drivers, and application programs. Devices, such as devices A and B, communicate through a bus (such as an expansion bus) to system software. The system software includes device drivers (device driver A and device driver B, respectively) implemented in the system software kernel. Applications can access the devices through the system software kernel and the appropriate device drivers.
A problem can arise where, in some network environments, a peripheral device may not be coupled directly to the computer system through the bus, but rather through a network connection, via a so called “thin” or “ultra-thin” client. For example, in an environment with a thin or ultra-thin client, it may not be possible to embed device-specific code, such as device drivers, for the large number of devices available.